1 Week to 30: 9 Random Things About Me

1. I am shy: Kindly spare me the rolling eyes. Really I am. It was worse when I was younger. I couldn’t speak to people. Especially boys. Over the years I learned to overcome it, and cover it up by being loud. But it still happens when I’m caught off guard. A random compliment can throw me off completely and one of the downs of being light is that it is evident! But I recover quickly. So next time you say something to me and I seem a bit aloofish, just consider that maybe I’m tongue-tied 😀

2. I’ve never cooked ugali. I can feel your raised eyebrows and whistles of disbelief. See, the thing is at home, the staple food is rice. So that was the first thing we were taught to cook. But we do eat Ug, but since there was many of us, there was always someone else cooking it. And whenever I invite my friends over, they always ask me to do Swahili food. Enyewe to be honest, I have no idea how this happened. I love eating it, I’ve just never cooked it. So I ended being a girl who can cook biriani in half an hour but can’t do ugali. My girl tells me I should forget getting married to a Luhya man. 😦

3. When I was a kid I wanted to be an astronaut. I was fascinated by the night sky. I would take walks at night looking at stars and counting constellations for hours. I once read that there was a shower expected that night, so I set up a mattress in the backyard and watched the sky. And I got to see this huge comet, orange and it moved from one end of the sky to the next. It was amazing. Then one day I discovered I was afraid of heights. Yeah, that was the end of that dream.

4. I have this thing about my toes. When people look at them, I get the urge to hide them. I don’t know why. I know they’re unusual looking (yes, unusual not weird!) so I’m self-conscious about them. Weird thing is even if I’m wearing closed shoes, and someone looks at them, they just curl. Very strange.

5. You know that thing they say about women being great at multi tasking? Well, it skipped me. I can’t multi task worth anything. When I concentrate on one thing, I close off everything else. I annoy the hell out of my pals. Like when we’re hanging out and there’s a show on and I won’t hear the convo cos I’m listening to the show. I suspect I might also have a nothing box in my brain like men.

6. I don’t embarrass easy. You know why? Because when I was around 12 the most embarrassing thing happened to me. I was at my grandma’s house with loads of my cousin. So I went to the loo. Now, the person who built that house had a weird sense of humour. First the loo was those ones you squat. Secondly, it was a bit raised. 3rd, the window was pretty low. So the first thing you did when you went to the loo was make sure the window is closed. I was too pressed. The next thing I hear is loud laughter. I look behind me and I see that I was mooning the whole group. Plus one of my cousin’s pal whom I had a huge crush on. FML. So every time an embarrassing situation comes up, I tell myself, you survived mooning your crush, it really can’t get worse than that.

7. I have weird memory patterns. Very bad short-term memory. There was this time I was talking to my friend on phone, and she asked me to do something for her. Immediately after her call someone else called me. When I was done with that call, I couldn’t remember what my friend had told me, I had to call her back and ask her. However, I have very good long-term memory. I remember things that happened 10 years ago. With clarity. I remember phone numbers of people who I was in high school with. Landline phone numbers from the 90s. And I remember birth dates, but not always who they belong to. So I’d be like today’s someone’s birthday but I have no idea who. The question is, when do the short-term become the long-term? Someone help?

8. When I was like 10, I chased my cousin around the hood with a knife. I don’t remember exactly what he did, but I took a kitchen knife and ran after him screaming “Today I’ll kill you.” My cousin had to go hide behind his mother (wuss) So I stood there ranting like a mad person well kid and the whole hood came out to see. My mum whipped me proper for that. I honestly don’t know where it came from. I haven’t had any such moment since, but it’s comforting to know that I have it in me, you know, in case I get a role in a movie and I have to be the deranged killer 😀

9. I get easily affected by small things, but when a real crisis happens I’m calm enough to handle it. I think I’m just a contradiction. Sometimes, I get upset because I went to the supermarket and couldn’t find my favourite brand of yoghurt and I was really looking forward to having that yoghurt. It can ruin my whole afternoon. But I get into a mat and realize I left my wallet at home and face a mean looking makanga, and I calmly try to come up with an alternative. My pal is constantly telling me, stop sweating the small stuff. I’m still learning.

Love it! Funny bout the mooning wa wa! How embarassing!!!! Even us kuna choo kama hiyo at my grandmas. U gta make sure the curtain is closed(thez no window, jus a grill) but if someone is washing the dishes in the karo behind, u keep feeling they can hear u!! Agonizing.

Enyewe, i feel you on that Ugali vybe. The last time i tried making some, I whipped up a nice white dome of heaven. It looked good. Perfect even. Ikikatwa it fell to either side and unleashed a puff of uncooked unga in the centre. sigh. I wanted to hold my hands up and yell “STEP BACK! SCIENCE IS HAPPENING!”.

Stumbled upon your blog and read most of it. must say you are a pretty good writer really able to capture the readers imagination without seeming to try too hard …(as some blogs feel…like they try to hard to be intelligent and witty).